


I'm not trying to hurt you, I just love to speak

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen, Rose Lalonde - Freeform, Terezi Pyrope - Freeform, The Handmaid - Freeform, Unwanted parental feelings for three trolls and a mad human child: the saga, Vriska Serket - Freeform, it is a mystery, scratch is lying about not caring about his kids-- OR IS HE????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1514156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doc Scratch is, undeniably, an evil man. And doubtlessly the cleverest in this or any other universe.</p><p>Yet clever men are doomed to folly when children get involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm not trying to hurt you, I just love to speak

**Author's Note:**

> title and inspiration from "bittersweet," by panic at the disco. i _highly_ suggest listening to it with scratch on the mind.

The Handmaid is difficult at best, and downright demonic at worst. He can't blame her, of course. He's an understanding man, and she's a stubborn child.

 

A stubborn child with psychic powers and a tendency to attempt suicide to spite him, but a child nonetheless.

 

That's why he told himself at the very beginning of his task, when he was observing the child while she still had a six-letter-name and no knowledge of what would unfold at her hands, that he would not get involved. He would train her to serve his lord, and he would do so with utmost skill, and then he would bid the child a callous farewell and not look back.

 

He told himself he would, but he's a terrible liar.

 

She's annoying, and crass, and violent, and when he hands her over to his lord she goes silent for the first and last time in her entire life (Scratch feels just a little proud that he's taught her this respect, for his lord if not him.)

 

His lord sends her on her first mission for him immediately- he's a man of action, after all, and Scratch has trained his child well after all these sweeps, so she nods and rips open the fabric of time to begin the rest of her life. She doesn't even glance back.

 

He watches his child step into the rift (the last time he will ever see her) and feels something tugging at his withered cotton heart that feels painfully like sadness, but he dismisses it and bows to his lord, mumbling something respectful he can't remember later. Creatures like him don't _get_ sad.

 

He reassures himself with this fact while he sits in the overlarge plush chair he favours (she constantly hid it just to irk him) and stares blankly at his green mansion, absently thinking that it might look better with just a bit of red.

 

-

 

He does it again, even though he swore up and down he wouldn't. The troll children from the world she helped create (destroy) weave themselves into his life, or perhaps the other way around.

 

It begins when the teal child manipulates him (and some minuscule part of him has to be impressed that she managed to do so) into doing her own dirty work.

 

Terezi neatly informs him, using far too many numbers to be grammatically correct, that Vriska has stolen his cue ball.

 

His.

 

The teal child was only a catalyst, really, for he would have reacted just as poorly when (not if) he found out for himself. She just... sped up the process. Violently.

 

He watches the children play his game and destroy his Handmaid's beautiful, horrible planet as distantly as he can, but he still focuses far too much on teal and cerulean.

 

(He can't watch the new rust girl. She's young and bright and dead in a way his Handmaid wasn't, and their familiarity is too much for him.)

 

He watches cerulean wreak havoc on teal, on brown, on yellow, on the whole game, and is pleased at his own forced indifference.

 

He watches the two bleed and fight, watches every timeline, every death and every unpulled punch.

 

His children are particularly violent population of a particularly violent species, and all their hate is going to burn them up. But they're such willing pawns that he can't find the proper regret for manipulating them, let alone sadness for his actions.

 

He observes the split timeline with what he calls cool indifference, watches teal kill cerulean or vice versa. They're tough children, and he's a man with a job to do.

 

Scratch ignores the tug in his heart the second time around.

 

-

 

Rose Lalonde is an interesting piece in a very large game.

 

She's going to be the one to create his greatest weapon, he knows from the very beginning. 

 

She's got all the proper skills for it. She's clever, headstrong, and painfully foolish.

 

He doesn't feel at all bad for manipulating her so. Not once.

 

She throws herself into the game, breaks every rule and shatters every plan. She rips her world apart like two other children once did, trying to uncover secrets far too large for someone like her. Someone like anyone.

 

Scratch appreciates her cleverness, at first.

 

But she doesn't trust him. She doesn't have a good reason to, of course, especially considering the fact that he's playing her like a trumpet, but he's unused to having to work for belief. He's omniscient, after all.

 

It's a sweet success to see her form the very thing she fought to destroy, if a bit bittersweet.

 

Scratch tells himself he's not sad either time she dies, because he can't afford to again. 

 

But the green spacey one breaks their game in a way he's never seen, never could have predicted even with all his foresight; he sees his Handmaid and the teal child again.

 

In the last ten minutes of his life, feeling the painful, thrumming buzz that means his lord will be here soon, he thinks that he would like to see if his children can beat his unbeatable game.

 

It's too late for that. It's too late for the lot of them, himself included, and he dies with regret in his cotton-stuffed heart.


End file.
